Gavriel in Israel

An Apology and a Catch-Up

Everything I have done in the past few months shall be summarized in a few paragraphs.

To start, I moved out of the ulpan at the end of January and moved into the regular 5th grade class. At first it was a bit overwhelming for my little brain to hear everything in Hebrew. But slowly, everything started to make sense. My class is an all-boy class, there are 38 of us. At recess there are three things that kids in my class do: play soccer, basketball or wander the school. I switch off between basketball and soccer.

There have been lots of holidays, each one has been fun in its own way. On one of the days of chol hamoed Pesach we went to a historic underground bullet factory in Rechovot. We also had a picnic lunch there, and after lunch we played baseball. On Yom Ha'atzmaut, we went to Park Canada and had a barbeque. This was really the first time that I felt that I was part of a big holiday. The park was full of other people doing the same thing: meeting friends and barbequing. One of our friends brought their new baby, she is very cute and I got to hold her for a very long time. It was very fun! On Yom Ha'atzmaut night we went out and saw fireworks. They lit up the sky. It was very pretty.

On Lag b'omer, I went to Bnai Akiva and had a big bonfire with my group. At its highest, the fire was 9 feet tall. We had hotdogs, hamburgers and popsicles. With one of my friends, we found the box of popsicles, and when no one was looking, we took it! There were only three left in the box, my friend gave two of them away and I ate mine.

On Shavuot night I learned with my family: cousins, uncle, aunt, two savtas, a saba, my brother and my parents. We learned about Elihayu Hanavi. The next morning, we woke up at 4:45am even though we went to sleep at 10:45pm. We went to a minyan at the Tayelet. The minyan ended at 7:20am, and afterwards everyone went back to sleep. It was a very long day, but I learned how to play Risk, so it wasn't so bad.

That's about it for now, I'll post soon.

Signing off,

Gavi